Friday, January 30, 2009 [ sunstar.com.ph ]
THERE are no retrenchments of workers or plant closure of Holcim Philippines in Davao City, similar to the company's move in its Lugait plant in Misamis Oriental.
This according to the top executive of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) in Southern Mindanao based on a monitoring conducted by the agency on Wednesday.
"We checked it out with the Human Resource manager and the administrative manager of the Holcim-Davao yesterday (Wednesday), both of them denied there is retrenchment or plant closure. We had to monitor it considering that the company is one of the world's biggest suppliers of cement," Jalilo dela Torre, Dole 11 regional director, said in Thursday's interview.
Earlier, it was reported that Holcim's Lugait plant was shut down, but Holcim insisted it was not because of the global financial crisis, but "because of lesser demand of cement in the local market."
Company executives said the closure was only temporary as Holcim could have the Line 1 of the plant operational, as demand for local cement will increase. It said that the decrease in demand for cement locally could be attributed to the slowdown of government infrastructure spending and to the reduction of new private construction projects.
At the same time, dela Torre claimed that two mining companies, one of it is Apex in Compostela Valley, have retrenched a total of 179 workers.
"The Apex had retrenched 157 workers as of Wednesday, but it will take effect on February 26. Another mining company had retrenched 22 workers last December," dela Torre said.
Aside from these mining companies, three more companies have retrenched workers including the Sychar Hotel in Bajada, Davao City, the Legaspi Oil, and the Guilded Expression with more than 80 workers.
But dela Torre disclosed that these three companies have still to be validated by the agency whether the companies' retrenchment action is in connection with the global financial crisis.
"We also noted about 59 workers retrenched under the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector, but we are not worried kasi 'pag may retrenchment from a certain company, sinasalo ng ibang BPO companies, so we are confident that most of these retrenched workers are already employed," he said. (JGRS)
